Massive flooding returns, but Mozambique prevents disaster
Flooding killed 700 in 2001, but has claimed fewer than 10 lives this year, thanks to extensive preparations.
from the February 21, 2007 edition
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"In real terms, floods are good. Cyclones are good," Zucula says. "They play a good role ecologically. What makes them disasters are vulnerable people."
The disaster agency opened regional branches to monitor and prepare for natural hazards. The office in Caia monitors weather forecasts, upstream dam capacity, and rainfall in neighboring countries that will flow down the Zambezi.
As early as October, the Mozambican government predicted flooding. It set up an early-warning system and moved equipment such as boats and communications gear into the region. It worked with the WFP to move food into the area. Earlier this month, when reports of more rain and diminishing dam capacity confirmed their fears, Zucula's team started evacuating low-lying villages.
Although Zucula consults with representatives from the UN agencies and the aid groups that come to Caia, he is the one who decides upon the daily rescue or aid operations.
One recent day, for instance, he decides that the WFP must fly food to a village called Matilde, a community of several thousand people that has been turned into an island by the rising Zambezi. There are reports that people there – cut off from supply trucks and markets – have been without food for three days.
Within hours, WFP workers load up the agency's Mi-8 helicopter with two tons of cornmeal, cooking oil, and lentils. They fly 40 minutes along the Zambezi, its silver-brown waters snaking through villages and fields, and land on a soccer field surrounded by coconut palms.
While few people have died in these floods, the damage to fields is extensive. The WFP estimates that the flood destroyed 100,000 acres of farmland. The agency has passed out 300 tons of food to some 30,000 people.
"We have been very hungry," says Zeca Martins, a village elder in Matilde, as younger men from the community help WFP workers unload heavy bags of corn meal. "The machambas," – rural Mozambicans' small fields – "are all finished."
Back at his headquarters in Caia, Zucula continues evaluating reports from different aid groups. At this point, he says, the emergency rescue operations are finished. Floodwaters are receding, and the government has reduced the discharge from the Cahora Bassa Dam upstream. Now, his attention is shifting to the displaced people.
Not far from Caia, more than 4,000 people from the low-lying Gangala community are building small bamboo and grass huts on a higher-elevation swath of land. There is one water spigot and no latrines.
These villagers have been here before. They moved to this area during the 2001 floods. But they returned to their land near the river after the crisis, saying it was more fertile. "It is not easy to get new land," explains Pedro Jose, who fled here with his wife and three children.
"We should have had tents laid out, water in place, latrines – a full tent village," Zucula says. "But that takes money. So we do things in sequence ... No. 1: save lives, rescue people. Now we are shifting to the accommodation centers. This is what we need to do – it is an organized, targeted response."
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